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Russian : why so popular ? | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 73 of 107 27 February 2012 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
*sigh* How far are we going to diverge from the original thread topic? My original point was that Latin is more often studied as an academic pursuit, and therefore not particularly comparable to other living languages. I deeply apologize to all the ethnic chemists I offended. I will recant and rephrase my post:
Is that better? Or have I further offended by implying that a good vocabulary isn't practical and doesn't lead to tons of amazing career opportunities and seriously it'll turn your life around and bring back the dead and oh man you'll get so many chicks and make so much money and so much more man so stop hating on vocabulary you vocabulary hater!!!? Edited by nway on 27 February 2012 at 12:11am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 74 of 107 27 February 2012 at 1:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Yikes, you sure hate being wrong! Of course I was being a little petty, but living in a society where science is constantly being undermined by influential people and organizations has made me sensitive to slights against it. That's my last word on the topic. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5047 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 75 of 107 27 February 2012 at 4:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I fail to see what a simple mathematical equation that confirm the existence of a positive correlation between GDP and language learners, has to do with fairness, justice, or our understanding of history or economics. GDP figures correlate with the number of language learners, it probably correlates even higher with the total number of speakers&learners, it's just a fact. Correlation isn't causation, correlation doesn't necessitate correct predictions in all cases, especially if you start being picky, yada-yada, disclaimer this, read a book on statistics that, and so on. If you think you have a different, better, stronger factor to be considered that would or has a stronger correlation with number of language learners, you and everyone is welcome to take other potential variables and run the numbers, whether they're the number of native speakers, number of books published, or number of unicorns you see when smoking a pipe while speaking that language.
I am one such, ie. sorry not to have studied more chemistry even if I aced AP Chem after 2 days of studying, flexes. I sincerely plan to correct that in the future, along with more math, physics, biology, and what have you, at my leisure time, not just languages and piano. Your problem, fellow LL forum dwellers, is likely self-selective bias since you probably talk mostly to people who are interested in languages, rather than the people in white coats, pun intended.:)
As a point of fact, I'm fairly certain many more people study chemistry than people who learn piano or another instrument, with Latin scholars trailing in the numbers way behind. Not all countries include music or instrument training in the school curriculum, and fewer probably include Latin. That being said I get the reality of U.S. system with its music education and AP Latin was referring to.
I can't recall the source off the top of my head, and putting the issue of raising the dead aside for a moment, I do recall having seen studies that draw a strong positive correlation between adult native language mastery (but surprisingly and unfortunately not foreign language mastery) and life success (I think it was income) at least as far as it pertains to the W.E.I.R.D. societies. (n.b., again correlation, not causation, put down the dictionary, yada yada) As far as Russian being "so" popular, I feel Russian as a foreign language is rightly and properly popular, "just so", and not more popular (as French or Spanish) or less popular (as say Bengali or Punjabi) relatively speaking. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 76 of 107 27 February 2012 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Yawn. This GDP "debate" is dumb. Time for people to move on.
I agree regarding chemistry. Of the three sciences I'm pretty well acquainted with (biology, chemistry, and physics), chemistry is probably the one I think about most in my day-to-day life - in terms of trying to explain how something is the way it is. Physics, much more rarely. Biology, almost never. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 77 of 107 27 February 2012 at 8:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
It is possible to predict the nominative from any form because it depends on the last sound of the stem. In the third declension there is sigmatic and asigmatic nominative. We know what happens with a sound when it meets s. For example, if the stem ends with g or c, like regis, ducis, it will end with x in the nom., if the stem end with n (hominis, leonis), the n is dropped and the nom. ends with o (leo, homo). Of course floris could be from flor, while it is from flos, but there are no very many situations like that. All those datives plural can be easily formed from the gen. sing. according to strict rules. In Russian you have to know the nom. plural first which is not predictable well, becides having many "regular" variants. And it still doesn't necessarily determin the stress in the dat. pl. How would you guess for example: окнО - Окна, пОле - полЯ, Яблоко - Яблоки, дЕрево - дерЕвья? Latin verbs are usually given in four forms because they have three stems and the conjugation is also needed, dico dixi dictum dicere (the shortness of e in ere is shown with a breve). Latin verbs are more regular than Russian too. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4672 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 78 of 107 27 February 2012 at 9:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
This is due to the non language related analogies that were made. I hope they will stop now. I study Russian because I come across a lot of Russians in my home town and during my travels, and I want to talk to them. I like dating Russian women. Russian food is delicious. I also enjoy Russian movies, literature and music. I would like to travel extensively in Russia, because I see so many beautiful nature pictures. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Itikar Groupie Italy Joined 4670 days ago 94 posts - 158 votes Speaks: Italian* | Message 79 of 107 27 February 2012 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
And is it so extremely different from Russian in the end? It is always better than confusing a genitive for a dative, or ablatives for genitives. Russian is usually less ambiguous even speaking with wrong stresses, and not to mention in the written.
In Russian and in Latin plural neuters usually end with -а (or a variant like -я). And, in general, a bit of logic helps. So i.e окнОм and Окнам. Окном could not be. Дерево has also an obsolete plural in дерева. Яблоко is irregular. At that point имя or время are worse. But corpus is really that better? Moreover in Russian you won't meet something like the super-tricky fourth declension.
On which basis do you think that they are less regular? I agree that the root of the Russian verb is a bit more variant than Latin (or any Romance) roots, but in general follows rules similiar to the ones quoted by you about Latin nominatives of the third declension. I find anyway less painful to learn Russian verbs in couples than a Latin verb (or any modern Romance irregular) alone. :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 80 of 107 27 February 2012 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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But corpus is really that better?
Of course, it is. If you know the gen., which is easy to predict, corporis, then it's trivial to say that the plural is corpora. How would you predict all those plurals from the singular forms in Russian? Дерево has also an obsolete plural in дерева. Who cares? Яблоко is irregular. It's not. Moreover in Russian you won't meet something like the super-tricky fourth declension. What is tricky in the fourth declension? It is always better than confusing a genitive for a dative, or ablatives for genitives. It is usually clear from the context. It's hard to mix gen sing. with abl. pl. of a different word. Russian is usually less ambiguous even speaking with wrong stresses, and not to mention in the written. A wrong stress makes the word sound very differently. Russian with wrong stresses is incomprehensible. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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